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GOD  UNKNOWN 


CHARLES  SEARS  BALDWIN 


CHAUNCEY  WETMORE  WELLS 

1872-1933 


This  book  belonged  to  Chauncey  Wetmore  Wells.  He  taught  in 
Yale  College,  of  which  he  was  a  graduate,  from  1897  to  1901,  and 
from  1901  to  1933  at  this  University. 

Chauncey  Wells  was,  essentially,  a  scholar.  The  range  of  his  read- 
ing was  wide,  the  breadth  of  his  literary  sympathy  as  uncommon 
as  the  breadth  of  his  human  sympathy.  He  was  less  concerned 
with  the  collection  of  facts  than  with  meditation  upon  their  sig- 
nificance. His  distinctive  power  lay  in  his  ability  to  give  to  his 
students  a  subtle  perception  of  the  inner  implications  of  form, 
of  manners,  of  taste,  of  the  really  disciplined  and  discriminating 
mind.  And  this  perception  appeared  not  only  in  his  thinking  and 
teaching  but  also  in  all  his  relations  with  books  and  with  men. 


GOD  UNKNOWN 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

A  Study  of  the  Address  of 
St  Paul  at  Athens 


CHARLES  SEARS  BALDWIN 


MOREHOUSE  PUBLISHING  CO. 

MILWAUKEE 

A.  R.  MOWBRAY  &  CO. 

LONDON 


COPTEIQHT   BT 

MOREHOUSE  PUBLISHING  CO. 
1920 


IN  MEf^ORJAM 

C  vx>>00<?\ 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  interprets  the  great  speech  of  St.  Paul 
at  Athens  in  terms  of  the  ideas  about  religion 
most  familiar  to  college  students  to-day.  Developed 
from  addresses  at  Columbia  and  Indiana  Universities, 
it  is  now  offered  to  that  wider  company  of  students,  in 
college  and  out,  whose  quest  for  reality  is  the  sign  of 
the  new  life  that  is  youth  at  any  age,  and  the  promise 
of  reconstruction  after  war. 

Barnard  College,  Easter,  1920.  C.  S.  B. 


863687 


Men  of  Athens,  I  regard  you  us  quite  too 

much  given  to  gods,  for  as  I  have  gone  about 

and  surveyed  your  worships  I  have  found 

even  an  altar  inscribed  To  A  GOD  UNKNOWN.—- 

Acts  17 :22 


CONTENTS 

I.    RELIGION  IN  THE  OPEN     -     -     -  1 

II.    GREEK  AND  JEW 16 

III.    PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION     -     -  21 

IV.    PERSONALITY 33 

V.    SYMBOL  AND  REALITY     -     -     -     -  46 


I 

RELIGION  IN  THE  OPEN 

THE  recurrence  of  a  religious  note  in  the  verse 
inspired  by  the  war,  in  many  of  the  stories  and 
essays,  and  especially  in  soldiers'  letters,  is  due  to  a 
closer  contact  with  reality  and  expresses  an  enhanced 
sense  of  personality.  It  seems  extraordinary  only  to 
the  spiritually  dull.  Those  who  but  the  other  day 
said  that  religion  was  not  talked  about,  except  pro- 
fessionally by  propagandists,  must  have  forgotten 
their  youth.  Among  those  for  whom  life  is  still  an  ad- 
venture no  important  subject  is  talked  about  more. 
We  may  count  out,  of  course,  that  mere  repetition  of 
news  which  is  hardly  talk  at  all.  Real  talk  tends 
toward  religion  at  the  rate  by  which  it  becomes  an 
exchange  of  personality  with  personality.  The  young 
in  years  are  eager  for  this  give  and  take;  and  the 
young  in  spirit  thereby  renew  their  youth.  Both  do, 
indeed,  abhor  cant;  for  they  wish  not  to  accept  ex- 
perience, but  to  explore  it.  Both  are,  indeed,  chary 
of  sentimental  expression ;  for  they  fear  lest  emotion 
be  diluted.  But  to  assume  that  religion  cannot  be 

1 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

talked  about .  vi1  hout  cant  or  sentiment  is  quite  blind, 
and  impoverishes  personal  intercourse. 

The  ancient  world  seems  to  have  talked  of  religion 
even  more  freely.  Though  we  are  not  to  assume  that 
the  man  on  the  street  in  Athens  conversed  after  the 
manner  of  Plato's  Dialogues,  he  seems  to  have  dis- 
cussed the  same  topics  of  life,  death,  and  immortality, 
and  to  have  discussed  them  on  the  street.  Otherwise 
the  topical  hits  of  popular  comedy — those  of  Aris- 
tophanes, for  instance,  on  Socrates — would  have  had 
no  point.  The  historian  of  the  earliest  Christian 
missions  records  that  "all  the  Athenians  and  strangers 
which  were  there  spent  their  time  in  nothing  else  but 
either  to  tell  or  to  hear  some  new  thing"  (Acts  17 : 
21).  The  context  shows  that  the  "new  thing"  they 
loved  to  talk  about  was  a  new  philosophy  or  a  new 
religion;  for  he  is  telling  how  a  learned  Christian 
Jew  debated  with  the  Greeks  in  the  public  squares  of 
Athens  the  eternal  topic  of  how  to  know  God. 

Though  such  open-air  debate  was  commoner  in 
Athens  than  in  New  York  or  London,  the  closing 
speech  of  the  Christian  had  so  extraordinary  a  sig- 
nificance that  it  still  stands  out  in  history.  In  our 
day  of  print  we  have  to  make  an  effort  of  imagination 
to  realize  this  debate  of  the  first  century  as  an  historic 
battle.  When  St.  Paul  stood  in  the  Areopagus  at 

2 


KELIGIOST  IN  THE  OPEN 

Athens  before  the  curious  and  lively  Greeks,  neither 
he  nor  they  had  in  mind  books  or  writings.  In  his 
habit  of  thought  and  in  theirs,  books  came  afterward. 
What  came  first  was  the  personal,  oral  expression  of 
the  teacher  and  the  manner  of  life  taught  and  prac- 
tised, then  the  transmission  of  that  teaching  through 
disciples  by  word  of  mouth,  and  only  after  this  the 
fixing  of  the  message  in  literary  form.  All  these 
stages  are  clear  in  the  records  of  the  teaching  of 
Socrates.  We  know  that  teaching  the  more  intimately 
because  the  literary  form  in  which  it  was  fixed  by 
Plato  suggests  the  vitality  of  oral  discussion,  of  urgent 
questions  concerning  the  deepest  things.  The  same 
stages  appear  in  the  earliest  records  of  Christianity ; 
and  stage  by  stage  they  reveal  the  sharp  difference, 
the  new  and  distinctive  character,  that  struck  the 
Athenians  as  they  listened  to  the  missionary  of  a  new 
religion  at  the  radiant  center  of  ancient  philosophy. 

Christianity  was  talked  and  lived  before  it  was 
written.  Its  earliest  propaganda  was  oral.  The 
earliest  documents  that  we  have  recovered  are  notes 
of  teaching  on  the  highways,  hymns  and  hymn-like 
creeds,  and  letters  to  communities  already  Christian. 
These  show  a  strikingly  new  attitude  in  the  quest  of 
God;  and  the  canon,  or  written  material  later  made 
authoritative,  shows  an  even  more  striking  difference 

3 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

from  any  other  written  vision  of  life.  Platonism 
may  be  derived  from  Plato's  writings ;  and  the  prob- 
lems of  its  interpretation  are  ultimately  literary.  So 
is  the  ethic  of  Confucius  or  the  philosophy  of  Comte. 
But  Christianity  is  not  primarily  the  writings  of  the 
Christ;  and  its  interpretation  is  not  ultimately  liter- 
ary. No  one  needs  to  be  told  that  it  is  to  be  found  in 
the  New  Testament ;  but  many  people  need  to  be  told 
that  the  New  Testament  is  not  so  much  its  sole  source 
as  its  chief  expression  in  writing.  Before  and  after 
this  expression  is  its  expression  in  human  life.  It 
was  first  called  a  way,  that  is,  a  way  of  life,  or  a 
religion.  The  way  was  not  derived  from  the  New 
Testament,  which  had  not  yet  been  written.  Both  the 
way  and  the  writings  proclaimed  themselves  as  de- 
rived directly  from  "the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the 
Life".  Both  insisted  that  the  word  of  God  is  more 
than  a  book. 

The  common  term,  and  the  most  significant, 
throughout  the  early  stages  of  the  Christian  message 
is  lvfe\  and  the  idea  is  even  more  frequent.  The 
earliest  missionaries  insisted  repeatedly  that  the 
characteristic  of  their  message  was  not  wisdom,  but 
power.  This  has  been  taken  to  mean  that  they  spoke 
without  wisdom,  but  with  warmth,  i.  e.,  simply  and 
with  feeling.  So  to  translate  it  is  to  do  violence  both 

4 


RELIGION  IN  THE  OPEN 

to  their  words  and  to  the  facts.  Simplicity  is  of 
course  necessary  in  speaking  to  the  unlettered ;  but  it 
does  not  prove  that  the  speakers  too  were  unlettered, 
and  no  one  can  maintain  that  St.  Luke  or  St.  Paul 
or  St.  John  were  even  unliterary.  Any  such  assump- 
tion is  refuted  on  every  page  of  the  Acts,  the  epistle 
to  the  Romans,  and  the  fourth  gospel.  Simplicity 
is  itself  a  literary  achievement,  as  any  one  knows  who 
has  sought  it ;  and  that  is  the  only  sense  in  which  the 
New  Testament  as  a  whole  is  simple.  No,  what  the 
missionaries  said  was  that  their  religion  had  some- 
thing more  than  style,  something  beyond  words,  the 
direct  influence  of  God.  For  Christianity  is  per- 
sonal in  the  extraordinary  sense  that  it  proposes  to 
deal  with  personality  directly.  All  its  utterances, 
oral  or  written,  whether  simple  in  the  ordinary  sense 
or  not — and  some  of  them  are  far  from  simple — 
assert  a  directness  of  communication  quite  beyond 
the  usual  notions  of  personal  influence. 

Christianity  did,  indeed,  spread  among  unlettered 
people  long  and  widely  before  it  formulated  its 
philosophy  or  even  compiled  its  history ;  and  this  has 
rightly  been  urged  as  one  of  its  claims  to  attention. 
But  the  inference,  instead  of  being  merely  that  it  was 
simple,  should  be  that  it  must  have  been  extraor- 
dinarily direct,  and  more  generally,  that  it  was,  and 

5 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

is,  primarily  a  religion.  A  philosophy  in  the  wider 
sense  of  an  animating  theory  it  had  always ;  and  this 
one,  at  least,  of  its  earliest  missionaries,  the  Paul  who 
flung  it  into  the  talk  of  Athens,  was  in  every  sense 
of  the  word  a  philosopher.  When  he  met  the  philos- 
ophers of  Greece  in  the  Areopagus  he  was  doubly 
equipped  for  battle.  He  had  already  debated  with 
the  common  people  on  the  streets.  Now  he  was  fac- 
ing the  more  intellectual  of  that  cityful  so  eager  "to 
tell  or  to  hear  some  new  thing" ;  and  he  knew  that 
the  time  was  pregnant.  The  battle  of  Jew  and  Greek, 
of  religion  and  philosophy,  is  historic  in  the  full  sense 
that  it  is  perpetual,  ever  renewed  so  long  as  men 
think  with  free  wills,  so  permanently  human  that  it 
has  remained  in  all  times  contemporary.  It  is 
historic  also  in  the  more  usual  sense  that  it  was 
dramatically  public.  The  attack  of  St.  Paul  on 
Athens  had  a  great  stage. 

"Now  while  Paul  waited  for  them  at  Athens,  his  spirit 
was  stirred  in  him  when  he  saw  the  city  wholly  given  to 
idolatry.  Therefore  disputed  he  in  the  synagogue  with  the 
Jews  and  with  the  devout  persons,  and  in  the  market  daily 
with  them  that  met  with  him.  Then  certain  philosophers 
of  the  Epicureans  and  of  the  Stoics  encountered  him. 
And  some  said,  What  will  this  babbler  say?  other  some, 
He  seemeth  to  be  a  setter  forth  of  strange  gods;  because 
he  preached  unto  them  Jesus  and  the  resurrection.  And 

6 


KELIGION  IN  THE  OPEN 

they  took  him  and  brought  him  unto  Areopagus,  saying, 
May  we  know  what  this  new  doctrine  whereof  thou  speak- 
est  is?  For  thou  bringest  certain  strange  things  to  our 
ears.  We  would  know,  therefore,  what  these  things  mean. 
(For  all  the  Athenians  and  strangers  which  were  there 
spent  their  time  in  nothing  else  but  either  to  tell  or  to  hear 
some  new  thing.) 

"Then  Paul  stood  in  the  midst  of  Mars'  Hill  and  said, 
Ye  men  of  Athens,  I  perceive  that  in  all  things  ye  are  too 
superstitious.  For  as  I  passed  by  and  beheld  your  devo- 
tions, I  found  an  altar  with  this  inscription,  To  THE 
UNKNOWN  GOD.  Whom  therefore  ye  ignorantly  worship, 
him  declare  I  unto  you. 

"God  that  made  the  world  and  all  things  therein, 
seeing  that  he  is  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  dwelleth  not 
in  temples  made  with  hands,  neither  is  worshipped  with 
men's  hands  as  though  he  needed  anything,  seeing  he 
giveth  to  all  life  and  breath  and  all  things. 

"(And)  he  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men 
for  to  dwell  on  all  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  hath  deter- 
mined the  times  before  appointed  and  the  bounds  of  their 
habitation,  that  they  should  seek  the  Lord,  if  haply  they 
might  feel  after  him  and  find  him,  though  he  be  not  far 
from  every  one  of  us.  For  in  him  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being;  as  certain  also  of  your  own  poets  have 
said,  For  we  are  also  his  offspring. 

"Forasmuch,  then,  as  we  are  the  offspring  of  God,  we 
ought  not  to  think  that  the  Godhead  is  like  unto  silver  or 
stone  graven  by  art  and  man's  device.  And  the  times  of 
this  ignorance  God  winked  at;  but  now  commandeth  all 
men  everywhere  to  repent;  because  he  hath  appointed  a 
day  in  the  which  he  will  judge  the  world  in  righteousness 
by  that  man  whom  he  hath  ordained;  whereof  he  hath 

7 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

given  assurance  unto  all  men  in  that  he  hath  raised  him 
from  the  dead. 

"And  when  they  heard  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead, 
some  mocked  and  others  said,  We  will  hear  thee  again  of 
this  matter.  So  Paul  departed  from  among  them.  How- 
beit  certain  men  clave  unto  him  and  believed,  among  the 
which  was  Dionysius  the  Areopagite  and  a  woman  named 
Damaris  and  others  with  them/'  * 

The  scene  kindles  imagination  as  one  of  the  great 
historic  meetings.  On  the  cliff  above  the  St.  Law- 
rence at  Quebec  stands  a  plain  shaft  with  this  inscrip- 
tion, WOLFE  AND  MONTCALM.  The  generous  spirit 
that  joined  so  simply  the  two  who  led  the  armies  of  the 
old  world  fighting  in  the  new  has  its  fulfilment  to-day. 
Montcalm  and  Wolfe  have  just  fought  side  by  side  in 
France;  and  the  Canadians  who  first  stemmed  the 
invasion  of  French  soil  were  of  British  blood.  But 
the  monument  remains  eloquent  of  more  than  chiv- 
alry. It  sums  up  a  long  war  of  colonization  and  the 
final  clash  of  political  ideals.  It  marks  a  turning- 
point  in  history.  It  is  a  scene  in  that  drama  which 
we  must  make  for  ourselves  from  the  historical  record 
if  we  wish  to  feel  the  movement  of  human  life. 
Imagination  has  its  use  in  history,  not  for  fanciful 
decoration,  but  for  realizing,  more  deeply  than  we 
can  through  abstract  generalizations,  the  human  im- 


Acts  17:  16-34. 

8 


RELIGION  IN  THE  OPEN 

port.  We  comprehend  history  not  only  by  statistics 
and  inference,  but  by  visualizing  its  dramatic  crises. 

So  generation  after  generation  has  dramatized 
Canossa,  with  the  Emperor  shivering  in  the  snow  at 
the  barred  door  of  the  Pope.  For  there,  as  on  the 
Plains  of  Abraham,  imagination  grasps  in  the  persons 
of  Henry  and  Gregory  the  significance  of  opposing 
ideals.  Among  such  dramatizations  of  history  no 
scene  should  be  more  revealing  than  that  in  the  Are- 
opagus when  the  apostle  to  the  nations  faced  the 
philosophers  of  Athens.  His  first  words  are  as  full  of 
battle  as  the  traditional  name  of  the  place:  "over- 
supplied  with  religions"  .  .  .  "worship  without 
knowing"  .  .  .  "him  declare  I  unto  you."  Though 
the  name  Areopagus  no  longer  suggested  to  the 
Athenians  the  antiquated  god  of  war,  the  place  be- 
came on  that  day  a  battle-ground  between  Hellenism 
and  Hebraism,  between  philosophy  and  religion,  be- 
tween an  old  art  and  a  new  life,  between  man  creating 
gods  and  man  created  and  empowered  by  God. 

What  were  the  "objects  of  devotion"  challenged  by 
this  stranger  ?  They  were  the  most  beautiful  temples, 
the  most  beautiful  statues,  of  antiquity.  Like  the 
Greek  masterpieces  of  literature,  like  Homer  and 
Sophocles,  these  Greek  masterpieces  of  architecture 
and  sculpture  became  the  models  for  the  centuries. 

9 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

Who  should  say  they  had  no  vitality?  Above  the 
city  thus  adorned  shone  the  Acropolis  with  its  great 
temple  and  its  great  statue  of  the  maiden  goddess 
Athene,  looking  out  over  the  blue  Aegean  of  the  poets. 
The  city  below  was  a  city  of  schools,  some  of  them  set, 
like  Oxford  or  Indiana  University,  in  gardens  and 
groves.  Becoming  more  and  more  a  city  of  com- 
merce, stretching  one  hand  to  the  Asiatic  East  and 
the  other  to  the  Roman  West,  Athens  was  still  a  city 
of  learning,  a  city  of  thought.  Thither  resorted  for 
study  the  youth  of  the  civilized  world.  Rome  her- 
self learned  at  the  feet  of  Athens.  The  streets  trod 
by  the  apostle  were  trod  by  Cicero;  and  both  came 
to  it  as  to  a  city  of  ideas,  of  discussion,  of  specula- 
tion, of  intellectual  talk.  In  this  aspect  its  closest 
modern  parallel  is  a  university.  To  such  an  audience 
the  unknown  Jew  cried,  "Whom  you  worship  in  igno- 
rance I  declare."  Among  such  statues  of  the  calm 
Olympians  he  held  up  his  crucifix. 

"WTiat  you  reverence  without  grasping,  this  I  de- 
clare. God" —  Are  these  words  to  the  most  intellect- 
ual city  of  its  time,  and  from  an  unknown  Jew, 
fanaticism  or  effrontery?  Do  they  reveal  the  man 
of  one  idea  among  the  men  of  many  ideas;  or  are 
they  the  oratorical  trick  of  shocking  an  audience  to 
attention  ?  Neither.  The  speech  is  neither  fanatical 

10 


KELIGION  IN  THE  OPEN 

nor  noisy.  However  else  it  may  be  regarded,  it  will 
always  claim  attention  as  thought.  Its  depth  is  of 
feeling,  too;  but  so  much  of  its  consistency  as  is 
merely  logical  may  be  expressed  as  a  series  of  proposi- 
tions about  God. 

God  is  a  person,  not  an  idea. 

He  is  the  personality  supremely  creative,  the  life- 
giver. 

He  is  creative  not  only  in  what  we  call  Nature,  but 
in  human  personality. 

His  empowering  of  human  personality  is  com- 
pletely personal,  the  complete  giving  of  himself. 

As  he  empowers,  so  he  judges,  human  experience, 
calling  us  to  develop  our  manhood  through  him. 

The  hope  of  humanity  is  the  manhood  revealed  in 
the  Christ,  who  is  God  making  himself  man  to  enlarge 
the  bounds  of  human  experience. 

These  fundamental  ideas  have  as  much  challenge 
now  as  then,  because  the  scene  enacted  in  Athens  two 
thousand  years  ago  has  been  reenacted  whenever  any 
Christian  apostle  has  summoned  any  Athens.  They 
survive  intact  the  translation  of  the  scene  into  terms 
of  one's  own  Athens,  one's  own  environment  of 
thought  and  life.  Translation  into  terms  of  con- 
temporary Boston,  Oxford,  or  Chicago  will  revivify 
dying  words ;  but  it  must  be  safeguarded  by  expand- 

11 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

ing  only  in  the  direction  of  the  whole  trend  of  thought 
seen  in  the  speaker's  other  utterances.  Such  trans- 
lation, seeking  the  thought  at  once  through  experience 
and  through  literary  interpretation,  will  open  the 
way  for  exploration. 

"While  the  missionary  was  waiting  for  them  in 
Boston  on  his  way  to  New  York,  he  was  cut  to  the  soul 
to  see  the  city  overrun  with  false  religions.  So  he 
debated  in  church  with  those  who  had  the  older  relig- 
ious traditions,  and  on  the  Common  every  day  with 
any  one  that  came  along.  WTien  the  Realists  and 
Pragmatists  from  Harvard  fell  in  with  him,  some  of 
them  said,  'What  is  this  word-monger  trying  to  say  ?' 
and  the  others  replied,  'He  is  probably  a  Swami,  or 
a  prophet  of  some  other  Oriental  cult' — this  because 
they  heard  'incarnation'  and  'resurrection'.  But  they 
set  him  before  an  open  meeting  of  the  Discussion 
Club  with  the  sarcastic  introduction :  'May  we  know 
just  what  this  new  philosophy  that  you  are  talking 
about  so  much  is  ?  You  bring  to  our  attention  some- 
thing— shall  we  say  ? — exotic.  So  we  wish  to  know 
what  it  really  amounts  to.'  Bostonians,  you  know, 
and  also  the  transient  intellectuals  who  are  pursuing 
Boston  culture,  enjoy  nothing  so  much  as  hearing  and 
discussing  religious  novelties. 

"Then  the  missionary  rose  and  said : 
12 


RELIGION  IN  THE  OPEN 

"  'Ladies  and  gentlemen  of  Boston,  the  thing  that 
strikes  me  most  here  is  the  insatiable  appetite  for 
religion.  After  I  had  reviewed,  as  I  thought,  the 
whole  list  of  your  various  worships,  I  found  one  more 
expressed  in  an  altar  with  this  inscription,  To  GOD 
UNKNOWN.  Now  my  doctrine  is  simply  the  definite 
proclamation  of  him  whom  you  do  not  know. 

"  'God,  if  you  conceive  him  as  creative,  as  the 
maker  of  the  world,  or  rather  of  the  universe,  has  not 
come  to  live  with  men  in  the  sense  that  men  brought 
him  down  by  realizing  him  in  their  own  images,  in 
the  sense  that  he  is  limited  and  divided  by  our  various 
subjective  conceptions.  Worship,  therefore,  cannot 
rightly  be  the  projection  of  our  own  imaginations; 
for  that  makes  God  depend  on  us. 

"  'No,  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  God  that  he  gives, 
that  he  is  the  life-giver,  the  maker  of  men  and  of 
nations,  diversifying  individual  and  ethnic  life  from 
the  common  human  stock.  The  common  human  im- 
pulse to  seek  God  moves  as  if  we  were  fumbling  after 
and  trying  to  find  him  who  cannot  be  far  from  any 
one  of  us,  since  in  him  we  live  and  move  and  are. 
Your  own  best  poets  have  said  in  various  ways  that 
we  are  his  offspring. 

"  'But  since  we  are  the  offspring  of  God,  we  may 
not  permit  ourselves  to  worship  our  own  images  of 

13 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

God,  however  beautiful  the  embodiment  of  these 
human  conceptions,  as  if  the  images  were  divine. 
What  is  really  divine  can  be  known ;  for  it  has  been 
fully  revealed.  In  those  times  and  places,  indeed, 
when  men  could  not  grasp  fully,  God  has  responded 
to  such  imperfect  worship,  such  gropings,  as  yours; 
but  those  times  are  not  these,  and  those  earlier  seekers 
after  God  are  not  you.  Your  worship  may  no  longer 
content  itself  with  the  empty  beauty  of  outworn  imag- 
inations, nor  your  theology  with  those  philosophical 
speculations  which  remain  abstract  because  they  balk 
at  moral  issues.  Morality  may  be  the  long  story  of 
human  behavior;  but  righteousness  is  divine.  The 
hope  of  righteousness  in  the  world  is  that  the  Creator 
is  the  judge. 

"  'God  has  come  to  dwell  with  men  in  the  only  way 
satisfying  to  the  soul,  not  through  our  embodying  his 
divinity,  but  through  his  embodying  our  humanity. 
We  need  not  imagine  him;  for  we  can  receive  him, 
since  he  gives  himself.  This  is  the  final  meaning  of 
God  as  the  life-giver.  His  final  revelation  is  per- 
sonal; for  our  final  need  is  the  empowering  of  per- 
sonality. He  has  given  us,  not  a  larger  philosophy 
nor  a  higher  imaginative  conception,  but  himself. 
The  personal  influence  of  God  is  not  limited  by  our 
philosophic  or  imaginative  grasp ;  it  is  not  our  ideas 

14 


KELIGIOIsT  IN  THE  OPEN 

or  imaginations ;  it  is  personality  working  directly  on 
personality.  Jesus  is  not  another  great  man;  he  is 
God  made  man.  To  receive  him  is  not  to  accept  an- 
other philosophy  or  another  example;  it  is  to  receive 
God.  The  eternal  life  that  has  been  the  dream  of 
every  great  soul  and  the  blind  hope  of  even  the  small- 
est has  been  given  completely  and  really,  not  partially 
and  symbolically,  by  being  given  in  the  person  of  the 
Son  of  God.  Thus  the  rising  of  the  Son  of  God  from 
the  dead  is  not  the  survival  of  a  man,  nor  the  with- 
drawal of  God  after  a  revelation  of  himself  on  earth ; 
it  is  the  proof  of  the  empowering  of  mankind  with 
eternal  life.  And  the  only  real  worship  is  the  wor- 
ship of  God  really  present  to  empower  us.' 

"When  they  heard  'rising  from  the  dead',  some 
openly  jeered.  Others  said,  'We  should  like  to  hear 
you  discuss  that  further.'  So  the  missionary  left 
them,  since  with  him  discussion  was  a  means,  not  an 
end.  But  some  of  them — a  judge  of  an  old  Cam- 
bridge family  and  several  others,  including  one 
woman — hung  upon  him  until  they  received  the 
faith." 


15 


II 

GREEK  AND  JEW 

THE  most  obvious  contrast  in  the  dramatic  scene 
is  that  between  Greek  and  Jew.  In  one  of  his 
most  interesting  essays,  Hebraism  and  Hellenism, 
Matthew  Arnold  reminds  us  that  the  Greek  spirit  and 
habit  are  pleasanter  to  live  with.  He  does  not  go  so 
far  as  to  assert  that  Hellenism  is  better  to  live  by; 
and  all  his  praise,  however  warmly  seconded  by  our 
own,  leaves  that  doubt.  Savonarola  must  have  been 
very  unpleasant  in  Florence.  To  read  Langland 
may  be  very  disturbing  after  the  serenity  of  Chaucer. 
When  we  try  to  be  Greeks,  the  Jews  disturb  us  de- 
liberately. When  we  talk  of  art,  they  talk  of  moral- 
ity; when  we  seek  to  enrich  life,  they  insist  on 
religion.  What  has  religion  to  do  with  life?  That 
is  the  essential  question ;  and  no  one  has  answered  it 
more  squarely  than  the  missionary  in  the  Areopagus. 
We  need  not  pause  over  those  bastard  modern 
Hellenisms  which  have  from  time  to  time  masked 
loose  thought  and  base  living.  The  apostle  knew  the 
real  Hellenism — none  better.  He  quotes  its  poetry ; 

16 


GEEEK  AND  JEW 

he  shows  his  grasp  of  its  philosophy;  and  if  he  calls 
its  art  idols,  that  is  because  he  is  considering  it  philo- 
sophically, as  Plato  sometimes  considers  poetry,  in  the 
single  aspect  of  its  expression  of  the  divine,  not  be- 
cause he  is  a  bigot.  The  word  idol,  for  him  and  for  his 
hearers,  had  none  of  our  associations  with  savages. 
Nor  was  he  limited  for  his  knowledge  of  Hellenism 
to  his  Greek  reading.  He  knew  Greek  life.  He 
judged  Greek  thought  by  its  fruit  of  manhood  and 
womanhood.  We  are  disconcerted  sometimes  by  a 
strange  moral  lack  even  in  Plato,  andjjpeflect  that  even 
Socrates  did  not  suffice  for  Alcibiade^j  but  the  apostle 
knew  the  perverted  life  of  Corinth.  The  two  epistles 
to  the  Corinthians  expose  in  Hellenism  an  organic 
weakness,  an  unsoundness  of  moral  fiber.  Even 
Athens,  with  all  her  wealth  of  tradition,  could  no 
longer  fortify  the  Greek  soul.  It  is  for  manhood 
that  he  contends  with  the  Greeks  in  the  sight  of  their 
immortal  gods. 

As  the  Athens  of  that  day  still  stood  for  the  real 
Hellenism,  nobler  than  perfumed  modern  imitations, 
so  the  unknown  Jew  stood  for  the  full  Hebraism,  for 
the  hope  of  Israel  as  the  hope  of  the  world.  His 
longest  and  most  highly  reasoned  work,  the  epistle  to 
the  Romans,  is  a  philosophy  of  history.  It  unfolds 
the  function  of  a  great  race  in  the  universally  human 

17 


GOD 

quest.  He  was  intensely  conscious  of  the  destiny  of 
race  in  the  development  of  humanity.  This,  and 
not  a  vague  sentiment  of  brotherhood,  animates  the 
oft-quoted  passage:  "He  made  of  one  every  nation 
of  men  to  dwell  on  all  the  face  of  the  earth,  limiting 
their  appointed  'days'  and  the  bounds  of  their  dwell- 
ing." We  can  feel  its  significance  keenly  to-day  by 
thinking  of  Russia,  more  than  once  subjugated  as 
Judea  was  then,  indignant  at  alien  violation,  groping 
for  its  destiny,  holding  in  uncertain  hands  so  much 
of  the  fate  of  the  world. 

Such  a  thinker  did  not  undervalue  the  Greek  func- 
tion of  order  in  thought  and  beauty  in  expression. 
He  does  not  rule  it  out ;  he  seeks  to  lead  it  on,  as  he 
seeks  to  lead  on  the  Jewish  tradition,  to  fulfilment. 
He  would  not  reconcile  the  two  by  compromise;  he 
feels  the  full  clash;  but  he  is  sure  of  God,  who  in- 
spires and  shall  empower  both  toward  the  realization 
of  a  larger  humanity.  \  Hellenism  and  Hebraism  are 
not  logically  contradictory ;  but  they  cannot  be  united 
by  merely  mechanical  combination,  still  less  by 
oscillating  between  the  two.  When  duty  has  not  seen 
beauty,  we  have  intolerance  and  fanaticism ;  but  when 
beauty  has  forgotten  duty,  even  Athens  is  lapsing  to 
decaj,,  and  the  Rome  of  later  centuries,  or  the  ISTew 
York  of  to-day,  produces  Cellinis  and  Borgias. 

18 


GKEEK  AOT3  JEW 

If  we  resent  the  crucifix  among  the  splendid  gods, 
the  warfare  of  duty  on  beauty,  we  are  in  need  of  more 
than  a  reconciling  formula,  a  philosophic  allotment  to 
this  and  to  that;  we  need  personal  unity.  It  is  not 
the  Jew  who  divides  our  lives;  it  is  the  Greek — for 
lack  of  hold  on  the  divine  as  organically  unifying. 
The  more  Athenian  I  am,  the  more  I  worship  archi- 
tecture and  sculpture  and  painting  and  music  and 
literature  and  drama  and  philosophy,  the  more  I  feel 
the  distraction  of  warring  claims  and  the  need  of  a 
single  development  of  the  whole  personality.  For 
surely  I  should  add  sociology  and  politics — and  re- 
ligion? Since  there  is  doubtless  something  or  some- 
body in  what  survives  or  is  rediscovered  as  religion,  I 
will  keep  space  enough  for  an  altar  To  GOD  UN- 
KNOWN. But  can  religion  be  a  part  of  life  ?  Must  it 
not  be  all  or  nothing  ?  Those  who  say  that  they  have 
not  felt  the  need  of  religion  are  thinking  of  religion  as 
a  refuge  and  solace  from  facts,  or  as  an  aspiration  be- 
yond facts.  But  if  it  is  rather  obedience  to  truth,  it 
cannot  be  a  part,  much  less  a  negligible  part ;  and  if 
it  is  the  response  of  man  to  God,  then  it  may  engage 
the  whole  personality  and  give  to  life  an  integrating 
power. 

So  the  apostle  seeks  to  reunite  a  life  already  di- 
vided, to  make  life  single  by  turning  it  from  many 

19 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

gods  to  the  one  God.  There  is  no  real  or  abiding 
beauty  apart  from  truth.  Life,  to  be  at  once  true 
and  beautiful,  must  be  centered ;  it  becomes  ugly  and 
false  by  being  dissipated  in  many  worships.  This  is 
the  meaning  of  those  first  challenging  words.  "Too 
religious?"  thinks  the  Athenian,  ancient  or  modern. 
"Most  preachers  have  complained  that  I  am  not  relig- 
ious enough."  But  if  he  analyzes  his  life,  he  will  ad- 
mit that  its  central  weakness  is  too  many  worships. 
God  is  one,  says  the  Jew  to  the  Greek.  Truth  is  one ; 
and  it  is  the  source  of  beauty.  Have  you  not  learned 
from  Aristotle  that  all  so-called  virtues  are  from  one 
source,  radiating  from  one  vitalizing  and  informing 
virtue  ?  Duty  is  one,  behind  and  beneath  all  duties. 
There  is  one  great  ought,  central  and  animating, 
"Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God."  Thereby  shalt 
thou  know  how  to  love  thy  neighbor  and  to  harmonize 
art  with  sociology.  "Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of 
God",  and  ye  shall  open  your  hearts  to  all  expressions 
of  manhood.  For  life  is  one. 


20 


T 


Ill 

PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION 

HE  Jew  tells  the  Greeks  that  they  must  make 
up  their  minds  about  God.  He  will  not  let 
them  leave  the  question  of  God  open  by  erecting  a 
provisional  and  empty  altar  to  God  Unknown.  If 
they  have  outgrown  earlier  conceptions,  these  must 
no  longer  be  cherished  merely  because  the  expression 
of  them  was  beautiful.  Life  cannot  fall  back  on  art ; 
art  must  express  life,  or  it  will  weaken  and  betray. 
Life  demands  a  real  knowledge  of  God.  You  must 
not  only  seek  him,  he  says,  but  find  him.  He  is  un- 
known ?  Then  you  must  know  him ;  for,  since  he  is 
God,  you  must  obey  him.  The  hour  strikes  here  in 
Areopagus. 

Greek  philosophy  preferred  to  leave  the  question  of 
God  open.  But  some  of  its  latest  speculations  were 
its  most  beautiful  because  they  came  nearest  to  con- 
clusion and  maintained  an  attitude  of  expectancy. 
Socrates  as  he  is  dramatized  for  us  in  the  dialogues 
of  Plato,  and  Plato  himself,  as  he  ranges  beyond  his 
master,  look  for  God.  The  noblest  and  most  thrilling 

21 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

of  the  Platonic  dialogues  are  more  than  speculations 
on  immortality;  they  are  aspirations  and  counsels 
toward  laying  hold  of  the  divine  life.  Such  thinking 
the  apostle  in  the  Areopagus  does  not  for  a  moment 
disparage.  He  wishes  only  to  carry  it  forward.  To 
the  question  put  so  humanly  he  brings  the  divine 
answer:  "He  that  seeketh  shall  find." 

Neither  Plato  nor  any  other  philosopher  gives  a 
moment's  tolerance  to  the  cant  saying,  "It  makes  no 
difference  what  you  believe,  so  long  as  you  do  right." 
Imagine  anyone  venturing  to  say  that  to  Socrates! 
Common  as  it  is,  it  has  no  meaning.  It  expresses  the 
lazy  living  that  comes  from  lack  of  thought.  For  we 
can  do  only  what  we  believe.  The  apostle's  insistence 
on  right  belief  is  the  insistence  of  every  philosopher, 
not  necessarily  on  a  code,  but  on  a  principle  of  life. 
Not  only  may  we  attain,  he  says,  the  knowledge  that 
shall  guide  our  lives,  but  we  must.  That  cannot 
remain  an  open  question. 

So  the  apostle,  while  he  shows  full  appreciation  of 
all  philosophy  that  is  really  seeking,  rebukes  sharply 
merely  philosophizing,  the  popular  use  of  philosophy 
for  intellectual  pastime  and  display.  "All  the  Athe- 
nians," says  his  companion  and  historian,  "and 
strangers  which  were  there  spent  their  time  in  nothing 
else  but  either  to  tell  or  to  hear  some  new  thing." 

22 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  KELIGION 

It  is  a  description  of  every  Athens;  it  exposes  the 
danger  of  every  intellectual  society,  the  danger  of 
talk  for  the  sake  of  talking  and  for  the  postponement 
of  action.  Hardened  into  habit,  he  says  elsewhere,* 
such  talk  is  no  better  than  the  flightiness  of  "silly 
women,  following  various  impulses,  always  learning 
and  never  able  to  arrive  at  knowledge  of  the  truth." 
This  is  what  the  man  in  the  street  means  by  asking, 
"What's  the  use  of  philosophy  ?  it  doesn't  get  you  any- 
where." The  saying  is  rude;  but  the  objection  is 
real.  Though  it  uses  the  word  philosophy  in  a  per- 
verted sense,  the  word  would  not  bear  that  sense  if 
philosophy  had  not  been  abused  for  centuries  by  those 
intellectuals  who  have  no  desire  to  get,  or  to  be  got, 
anywhere.  Too  many  Athenians,  ancient  and  modern, 
have  developed  what  Matthew  Arnold  calls  "openness 
of  mind,  quickness  and  flexibility  of  intelligence", 
at  the  expense  of  intellectual  energy  and  honesty.  In- 
stead, of  becoming  producers,  such  men  are  content 
to  remain  gymnasts.  Areopagus  needs  a  missionary. 
Philosophy  becomes  sterile  by  losing  touch  with  life. 
To  keep  the  mind  open  may  be  a  habit  actively  and 
constructively  scientific,  or  it  may  be  the  veriest  idle- 
ness. The  Athenian  tolerance  of  religions — and  our 

*2  Tim.  3:  6. 

23 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

own  tolerance — may  be  no  more  than  unwillingness 
to  commit  oneself.  Free  discussion  of  any  religion 
may  mean  that  the  discussers  wish  to  have  no  religion. 
Let  us  consider  how  differently  men  have  sought  God, 
lest  we  ourselves  should  be  compelled  to  find  him. 
But  is  there  not  more  likeness  than  difference ;  and  is 
not  the  significant  fact  that  they  all  sought — except 
you  ?  Let  us  contemplate  the  divisions  of  Christen- 
dom to  assure  ourselves  that  there  is  no  Christianity. 
But  is  not  the  significant  fact  the  vital  persistence  in 
spite  of  so  much  division  and  perversion;  and  will 
you  seek  to  reduce  the  variations  to  a  least  common 
denominator,  or  rule  them  all  out  alike,  because  you 
are  afraid  to  choose  ? 

The  missionary  in  the  Areopagus  is  not  tolerant  in 
the  sense  of  being  indifferent.  He  is  for  making  con- 
trasts and  oppositions,  and  above  all  for  arriving,  for 
thinking  through  to  an  available  conclusion.  He 
admits  that  the  finding  of  God  is  indirect,  meditative, 
and  poetic ;  but  he  insists  that  it  is  also  direct,  prac- 
ticable, and  determinate.  "He  hath  determined  the 
times  and  the  bounds,  if  haply  they  might  find  him, 
though  he  be  not  far."  Is  not  philosophy,  then,  a 
journey  rather  than  an  arrival  ?  To  the  question  of 
God  there  are  only  answers,  not  the  answer.  This 
missionary  insists  on  the  answer  that  shall  integrate 

24 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  KELIGION 

all  true  answers.  He  insists;  that  is  the  annoying 
habit  of  missionaries.  I  am  not  satisfied  with  my 
gods;  I  am  quite  willing  to  consider  any  others;  I 
have  publicly  proclaimed  my  openness  of  mind  by  a 
provisional  altar.  I  am  not  ready  to  commit  myself. 
Why  may  I  not  remain  free  ? 

"Certain  there  be,"  says  Bacon  at  the  opening  of 
his  essay  on  Truth,  "that  delight  in  giddiness,  and 
count  it  a  bondage  to  fix  a  belief,  affecting  free  will  in 
thinking  as  well  as  in  acting."  It  is  a  grim  saying 
of  a  great  intellect.  There  is  a  philosopher's  scorn  in 
that  word  affecting.  It  brushes  away  the  talkers  from 
the  field  of  real  search.  To  be  real,  the  seeking  must 
be  bent  on  finding,  not  content  with  the  search  itself. 
The  search  for  God  needs  more  than  debate  and  specu- 
lation, more  even  than  research;  for  it  is  a  life  ad- 
venture, like  the  search  for  the  Northwest  Passage. 
It  is  the  working  out  of  that  persistent  human  desire 
in  which  all  races  of  men  are  of  one  blood. 

This  universal  human  desire  is  not  satisfied  by 
philosophy.  Not  only  philosophizing,  but  philosophy 
in  its  true  sense,  may  stop  short  of  God.  "Canst 
thou  by  searching  find  out  God  ?"  is  the  question  of  a 
poet  who  is  most  clearly  a  philosopher.  It  discerns  in 
human  thinking  not  so  much  a  defect  as  a  limit. 
Agnosticism  is  the  name  given  in  the  last  generation 

25 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

to  a  philosophy  that  doubts  the  intellectual  possibility 
of  thinking  through  to  God;  and  the  name  contains 
the  very  word  unknown  that  the  apostle  found  in- 
scribed on  that  Greek  altar.  Agnosticism  may,  in- 
deed, be  lazy;  but  it  may  be  humble  and  honest. 
What  right,  then,  has  the  apostle  to  say  that  it  must 
be  temporary  ?  Can  we  force  our  thinking  through 
to  God?  No,  the  finding  on  which  he  insists  he 
presents  as  more  than  a  logical  conclusion.  While  he 
bids  the  Athenians  use  their  reasoning  productively, 
not  gymnastically,  he  tells  them  that  the  finding  of 
God  is  guided  by  God  directly.  To  know  God  is 
more  than  to  reason  out  a  philosophy  of  life ;  it  is  to 
reach  out  with  the  whole  personality  for  a  person  ever 
responsive.  Nor  is  it  the  achievement  of  the  few 
who  are  philosophers;  it  is  the  hope  of  mankind. 
Most  men  and  women  are  quite  unprepared  to  reach 
God  by  thinking  steadily  and  thinking  through ;  they 
are  not  therefore  condemned  to  live  without  him. 
For  "he  is  not  far  from  any  one  of  us." 

The  human  desire  for  God,  because  it  is  human,  is 
emotional.  There  was  once  a  philosophy  which  di- 
vided feeling  from  reason  almost  as  if  each  inhabited 
separately  and  exclusively  its  own  lobe  of  the  brain. 
That  division  is  not  tolerated  by  modern  psychology, 
and  it  was  never  tolerated  by  Christianity.  We  are 

26 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  KELIGIOJST 

not  so  crudely  twofold.  The  terms  feeling  and  reason 
are  useful  only  as  expressing  different  directions  of 
the  single  personality.  It  is  plain  that  both  enter 
into  what  we  call  will,  which  is  the  common  name  for 
the  personality  expressing  itself  in  decision  and 
action.  We  habitually,  and  as  we  say  instinctively, 
distrust  either  without  the  other.  We  distrust  reason 
by  itself,  and  we  do  not  usually  obey  it ;  we  distrust 
feeling  by  itself,  and,  though  we  obey  it  oftener,  in- 
deed too  often,  we  are  wont  to  explain  such  decisions 
in  terms  of  reason.  An  instant  decision  is  not  neces- 
sarily invalid.  It  may  be  the  response  of  the  whole 
previous  habit  of  life,  the  spontaneous  reaction  of 
the  whole  personality,  and  therefore  larger  than  the 
reasons  that  we  can  immediately  formulate.  It  may 
be  all  the  sounder  for  embracing  feeling  as  well  as 
reason;  for  feeling  is  part  of  experience.  None  the 
less  we  do  well  to  test  it  by  reasoning  it  out ;  for  the 
chief  practical  use  of  reasoning  is  to  analyze.  Feel- 
ing, in  most  men,  is  more  constructive,  and  living  is 
larger  than  reasoning;  but  that  does  not  dispense 
anyone  from  reasoning  as  far  as  he  can,  nor  permit 
feeling  to  be  unreasonable.  In  short,  feeling  and 
reason  are  complementary.  Instead  of  regarding  one 
as  superior  to  the  other,  instead  of  pretending  that 
we  usually  act  from  either  "pure  reason"  or  "pure 

27 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

feeling'',  we  ought  to  realize  that  logical  progress 
without  emotional  progress  may  be  illusory,  and  that 
feeling,  as  well  as  reason,  needs  to  be  educated.  For 
education  has  little  meaning  except  as  the  develop- 
ment of  the  whole  personality. 

The  speech  in  the  Areopagus  appeals  fully  by 
offering  a  satisfaction  at  once  logical  and  emotional, 
a  progress  of  both  thinking  and  feeling  in  the 
integrating  development  of  manhood.  What  the 
rhetoricians  call  appeal  to  feeling  is  most  obvious  in 
the  opening  challenge  and  in  the  reference  to  Greek 
poetry.  We  may  read  between  the  lines  of  the  sum- 
mary report  that  the  apostle  appealed  to  feeling  all 
through  the  speech,  that  the  appeal  to  feeling,  as  in 
most  real  oratory,  was  pervasive;  but  certainly  he 
appeals  none  the  less  to  reason.  For  the  speech  has 
a  close  consecutiveness  of  ideas  from  the  point  that 
God  is  the  creator,  through  the  point  that  he  is  there- 
fore continuously  the  empowerer,  to  the  point  that  he 
is  the  liberator  of  human  life.  But  its  consistency 
is  more  than  logical.  It  seeks  singly  to  animate  the 
whole  personality.  While  it  gives  argument  it  gives 
vision. 

So  each  hearer  of  the  message  attains  the  vision  oi 
God  not  by  logic  alone  nor  by  emotion  alone,  but  bj 
a  total  apprehension  through  all  the  ways  of  his  ex 

28 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  KELIGIOET 

perience.  So  also  this  satisfaction  of  the  whole  per- 
sonality is  not  merely  in  philosophy,  but  in  religion. 
A  man's  religion  has  more  or  less  philosophy  accord- 
ing to  his  intellectual  bent  and  training;  but  in  any 
case  it  is  more  than  his  philosophy,  which  is  at  most 
his  religion  formulated.  The  message  from  the  Are- 
opagus is  that  religion  is  not  merely  the  various  quests 
of  man  for  God;  it  is  God's  response.  "He  that 
seeketh  shall  find"  because  God  gives  himself.  To 
know  God  is  not  merely  to  expand  one's  theory  of 
knowledge.  Faith,  which  is  the  vision  of  human  life 
fulfilled,  discovers  not  only  "that  he  is",  but  "that  he 
is  the  rewarder  of  them  that  diligently  seek  him." 
We  are  not  to  lay  aside  thinking ;  we  are  to  think  not 
less,  but  more ;  we  must  not  shirk ;  we  must  not  remain 
agnostics.  But  we  are  to  remember  that  the  goal  is 
neither  a  beautiful  symbol  nor  a  working  hypothesis. 
Philosophy  attains  a  reasoned  view  of  truth.  That  is 
not  the  whole  answer  to  the  questing  soul.  The  an- 
swer, says  the  apostle,  is  not  simply  my  arrival  at  a 
goal  of  thought,  my  interpretation  of  experience ;  it  is 
an  enlargement  of  my  personality  by  the  answering 
touch  of  the  supreme  personality.  As  our  inmost 
desire  is  for  more  than  a  principle,  so  the  only  ade- 
quate answer  is  God  himself. 

That  is  why  the  conclusion  of  the  Areopagus  ad- 
29 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

dress  contains  the  word  most  irritating  to  all  Athe- 
nians, the  word  repent.  Not  only  by  Greek  philosophy, 
but  by  most  other  philosophy,  repentance  is  ignored 
or  even  rejected.  This  is  the  more  remarkable  since 
it  is  generally  accepted  by  unphilosophic  mankind  as 
natural  and  even  welcome.  It  is  what  I  might  ex- 
pect God  to  say  if  he  answered  my  whole  desire. 
The  word  is  religious.  It  almost  sums  up  the  im- 
portant fact  that  religion  answers  far  more  people 
than  can  ever  comprehend  the  answers  of  philosophy. 
To  repent  is  to  prepare  oneself  for  God.  It  expresses 
the  human  experience  that  to  find  God  is  at  once 
larger  and  more  common  than  to  think  out  a  theory 
of  the  divine.  Men  have  always  found  it  natural, 
since  the  attainment  is  more  than  intellectual,  that 
the  quest  itself  should  be  emotional  and  moral.  Else 
it  would  not  be  the  quest  of  one's  whole  manhood. 
And  the  apostle  adds  that  the  response  is  as  large  as 
the  desire.  To  find  God  is  not  only  to  attain,  but  to 
receive.  It  is  love  answered  by  love. 

Love  always  makes  us  conscious  of  our  defects  and 
eager  to  make  them  good.  Without  that  strong  de- 
sire to  give  and  to  receive  personally  we  may  remain 
complacent,  and  even  resent  reminders  of  our  short- 
comings ;  but  our  content  with  morality  good  enough 
for  the  crowd  is  at  once  disturbed  by  the  desire  for  a 

30 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  KELIGION 

large  and  deep  personal  relation.  "I  am  not  good 
enough  for  him.  I  will  be  better,  more  worthy  of 
his  friendship.  I  will  prepare  myself  for  real  com- 
munion." Every  strong  personal  influence  includes 
this  moral  awakening  of  friends,  and  gives  a  clue  to 
God's  awakening  of  manhood.  Sin  is  a  term  now 
unfashionable.  "Miserable  sinners"  suggests  to  many 
people,  confident  of  keeping  themselves  out  of  jail, 
the  merest  cant.  "We  are  heartily  sorry  for  these  our 
misdoings.  The  remembrance  of  them  is  grievous 
unto  us;  the  burden  of  them  is  intolerable."  In- 
tolerable! On  the  contrary,  I  bear  it  with  perfect 
ease,  and  am  often  able  to  forget  it  entirely.  Why 
will  Christianity  still  try  to  put  into  my  mouth 
phrases  so  antiquated  and  exaggerated?  Because 
that  prayer  is  part  of  the  preparation  for  the  presence 
of  God.  Until  I  set  out  really  to  approach  him,  I 
am  but  dimly  conscious  of  my  untruth,  my  flinchings 
and  perversions.  They  are  revealed  by  the  thought 
of  him.  "In  thy  light  shall  we  see  light."  Sin  is 
revealed  as  untruth  to  his  vision  of  me  and  as  the  bar 
between  us.  In  order  to  commune  with  him,  I  will 
try  to  be  my  real  self. 

So  repentance  is  the  Christian  enlargement  of  the 
philosopher's  "Know  thyself".  To  know  oneself  is 
rightly  made  by  philosophy  a  condition  of  knowing 

31 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

God.  It  is  a  necessary  road  for  honest  thought.  But 
it  demands  more  than  psychological  analysis,  and  it 
thrives  on  the  purpose  to  know  God.  To  reach  out 
for  what  I  can  be  helps  me  to  realize  what  I  am ;  and 
to  realize  what  I  am  opens  the  intercourse  which  shall 
make  me  what  I  can  be.  Sin  is  what  I  do  when  I  am 
untrue  to  myself.  It  is  the  perversion  and  interrup- 
tion of  my  personality.  That  I  see  in  the  light  of  the 
divine  personality.  I  wish  to  lay  hold  of  God  in 
order  to  become  more  and  more  myself.  To  find 
God  includes  finding  myself.  To  find  myself  de- 
mands more  than  the  formulation  of  my  philosophy ; 
it  demands  the  realization  of  my  religion.  The 
goal  of  my  life  is  more  than  formula,  more  than 
a  principle  of  living.  Righteousness,  or  personal 
efficiency,  is  achieved  through  obedience  to  a  response 
made  to  my  whole  self.  The  apostle  who  preached 
repentance  even  to  Greek  philosophy  put  it  into  a 
great  sentence  a  few  years  later  before  a  Roman 
court.  The  sentence  sums  up  for  every  age  that 
answer  of  the  human  to  the  divine  which  is  the  essence 
of  religion.  "I  was  not  disobedient  to  the  heavenly 
vision."  * 

*Acts  26:  19. 


32 


IV 
PERSONALITY 

THUS  the  personal  language  of  the  Areopagus 
address,  however  much  it  may  have  shocked  the 
Athenians  as  unphilosophic,  is  essential.  'Not  the 
divine,  but  God;  not  seekers  for  truth,  but  offspring 
of  God;  and  in  general  not  ii,  but  him;  such  terms 
might  seem  a  new  sort  of  poetizing.  But  the  Athe- 
nian intelligence  was  quick  to  perceive  that  they  im- 
plied a  direct  answer  to  the  real  human  question, 
What  has  God  to  do  with  me  ?  Indeed,  the  posing  of 
the  question  in  such  terms  must  itself  contribute  to 
the  answer  if  the  question  be  really  concerning  per- 
sonality. Is  it  not?  Is  not  the  eternally  human 
concern  with  philosophy  to  learn  how  to  enrich  and 
empower  human  life  ?  I  seek  experience  and  I  think 
it  out  in  order  to  become  more  intensely  and  largely 
myself.  If  I  listen  to  poetry,  if  I  hope  that  the  quest 
of  the  Holy  Grail  may  be  more  than  a  dream,  my 
hope  is  not  merely  of  respite  from  life,  nor  even  of 
the  inspiration  of  a  truth  larger  than  logic;  it  is  of 
some  more  direct  development  of  my  manhood. 

33 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

In  the  beautiful  poem  that  we  all  read  at  school, 
The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  Lowell's  knight  returns 
from  the  quest  of  the  Holy  Grail  disheartened.  He 
has  sought  in  vain.  He  feels  that  the  Grail  must  be, 
as  Tennyson's  Arthur  saw,  one  of  the  "wandering 
fires".  Then  at  home  again,  at  his  own  gate  sharing 
his  pilgrim's  crust  with  the  beggar  to  whom  on  setting 
out  he  had  carelessly  flung  alms,  he  is  illuminated. 
He  grasps  emotionally  that  great  saying,  "Whoso 
shall  receive  one  such  little  child  .  .  .  receiveth  me." 
Lowell  even  formulates  his  conclusion : 

Who  gives  himself  with  his  gift  feeds  three — 
Himself,  his  hungering  brother,  and  Me. 

Here  is  the  insight  of  poetry.  "Who  gives  himself" 
expresses  the  final  desire  of  every  generous  soul. 
What  we  are  trying  to  do  in  every  work  that  we  love 
is  to  give  ourselves.  All  oratory,  all  teaching,  is  in 
its  degree  the  giving  of  the  speaker  with  the  word. 
And  what  is  love?  Every  gift  of  my  friend,  every 
word  of  his  to  me,  is  but  the  sign  of  the  real  gift  of 
himself.  We  all  wish  to  believe  that  to  give  ourselves 
not  only  enhances  the  material  gift,  but  makes  it 
abound,  that  the  widow's  mite  is  indeed  worth  more 
than  its  face  value — nay,  that  the  only  real  gift  is  the 
gift  of  oneself,  the  imparting  of  one's  personality. 

34 


PEKSOXALITY 

Should  God,  then,  give  only  gifts,  not  the  great 
gift?  Cannot  God  give  himself?  Should  not  the 
giving  of  the  supreme  personality  be  perfectly  per- 
sonal? What  should  be  the  personal  influence  of 
God?  Can  it  be  limited  by  those  material  means 
which  we  ourselves  find  inadequate,  by  those  words 
through  which  the  imparting  of  ourselves  is  even  at 
best  imperfect  ?  Is  the  love  of  God  only  an  idea  of 
mine?  To  these  questions  Lowell's  answer  is  very 
sad.  We  cannot  find  the  Holy  Grail  except  in  our 
fellow  men.  We  can  give  to  God  by  giving  ourselves 
to  them;  but  God  cannot  give  himself  to  us.  Here 
poetry  reveals  in  a  flash  the  bounds  of  much  con- 
temporary religious  thought.  Keligion,  we  have 
often  been  told,  has  learned  to  turn  from  other-world- 
liness  to  the  human  cry  of  our  brothers.  It  has  been 
socialized.  It  has  come  out  of  the  churches  into  the 
streets.  It  has  turned  from  prayer  to  sociology,  from 
worship  to  education,  from  saving  souls  to  saving 
babies.  To  such  work  we  are  to  give  not  only  our 
money,  but  ourselves.  "Who  gives  himself  with  his 
gift  feeds  three" ;  but  the  question  still  burns  in  our 
hearts,  Who  shall  feed  the  giver?  I  can  give  no 
more  than  I  am ;  and  in  the  face  of  the  human  need 
what  am  I  ? 

"Si  jeunesse  savait;  si  vieillesse  pouvait"  The 
35 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

wistful  French  line  echoes  a  dissonance,  now  pathetic, 
now  tragic,  in  Greek  poetry  and  philosophy,  yes,  in 
all  literature.  If  youth  but  knew  in  time;  if  age, 
which  knows,  could  do !  Alas !  we  have  no  more  than 
begun  before  we  lose  bit  by  bit  the  force  to  carry  on. 
The  mightiest  feel  their  work  slipping  away.  Old 
Charlemagne's  last  building  days  are  shadowed  by 
the  apparition  of  a  pirate  ship.  Napoleon  returns, 
but  not  to  his  first  power.  The  real  Barbarossa  and 
the  mystic  Arthur  alike  return — in  dreams.  It  is  a 
commonplace;  but  every  ardent  soul  learns  it  afresh 
through  the  hand  laid  on  his  own  heart ;  and  humanity 
would  die  of  despair  but  for  the  certitude  of  youth 
that  the  flow  and  ebb  of  the  physical  tide  is  not  the 
formula  of  life.  Youth  believes  in  immortal  life; 
Christianity  offers  eternal  life.  Eternal  life  is  pro- 
claimed not  as  the  survival  of  the  physical  struggle, 
not  as  extension  but  as  expansion,  not  as  prolongation 
but  as  growth,  as  the  ripening  of  power  with  knowl- 
edge in  the  development  of  human  personality  by 
personal  contact  with  God. 

The  language  of  the  Areopagus  speech  is  personal 
because  its  message  is  life  from  life,  personal  life 
from  personal  life,  eternal  life  from  eternal  life. 
That  message  may  be  read  in  its  earliest  and  simplest 
written  terms  as  the  two  letters  to  the  Thessalonians. 

36 


PERSONALITY 

Most  frequently  it  is  iterated  by  early  Christianity 
in  the  phrase  "sons  of  God" ;  but  in  other  phrases  also 
it  pervades  the  New  Testament.  "I  am  come  that 
ye  might  have  life,  and  that  ye  might  have  it  more 
abundantly."  The  language  of  gospels  and  epistles, 
of  the  utterly  simple  letters  to  the  Thessalonians  and 
the  cogent  essay  to  the  Romans,  of  the  practical  wis- 
dom of  St.  James  and  the  poetry  of  St.  John,  is  con- 
sistently biological.  This  is  even  commoner  in  direct 
statement  than  in  parable.  The  sower  is  a  parable, 
and  "the  seed  is  the  word  of  God";  but  "the  word 
was  God".  "How  can  a  man  be  born  again  ?"  cried 
the  questing  rabbi ;  but  the  answer  was  a  reiteration, 
"so  is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the  spirit".  "How 
can  this  man  give  us  his  flesh  to  eat?"  jeered  the 
materialists ;  and  the  answer  bated  no  jot :  "Whoso 
eateth  my  flesh  and  drinketh  my  blood  hath  eternal 
life."  No  version  of  the  Holy  Grail,  not  the  most 
highly  imaginative,  is  more  concrete. 

If  we  say  that  these  are  figures  of  speech,  our  in- 
quiry is  not  advanced.  Figures  of  what  ?  For  what 
do  the  figures  stand,  for  dreams  or  for  revelation,  for 
human  longing  or  also  for  divine  response,  for  an 
aspiration  or  for  a  gift — and  what  gift  ?  We  talk  of 
religion  too  much  in  figures,  clouding  or  postponing 
thought ;  and  we  have  no  right  to  live  by  dreams.  To 

37 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

seek  the  end  of  the  rainbow  is  a  pastime  hardly  toler- 
able even  for  children.  Let  a  man  set  himself  to  read 
the  opening  of  the  fourth  gospel  afresh,  trying  to  put 
away  prejudice  and  other  conventional  bars,  setting 
himself  to  scrutinize  the  intention  of  the  words  them- 
selves as  if  he  had  never  seen  them  before.  Is  it 
Platonism  ?  Never  mind ;  we  are  not  seeking  a  label. 
It  is  poetry;  yea,  verily,  and  philosophy  too,  and 
therefore  is  the  more  likely  to  be  truth.  But  what 
does  it  mean  ?  Such  reading  cannot  but  reflect  that 
the  passage  "as  many  as  received  him,  to  them  gave 
he  power  to  become  the  sons  of  God"  speaks  the  char- 
acteristic language  of  Christianity,  cannot  but  dwell 
on  that  expression  which  is  most  characteristic,  not 
"as  many  as  received  it",  his  doctrine,  his  philosophy, 
his  example,  but  "as  many  as  received  him".  For 
the  New  Testament,  with  all  that  we  can  elsewhere 
gather  of  the  Christian  worship  and  life  that  it  repre- 
sents, makes  Christianity  the  receiving  of  the  Christ. 
The  assumption  that  we  can  receive  the  Christ  only 
as  we  receive  Plato  denies  both  a  persistent  human 
aspiration  and  the  plain  meaning  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. It  simply  rules  out  the  universally  human  in- 
quiry. What  is  it  for  me  to  know  God  ?  If  instead 
of  starting  with  an  assumption,  we  try  to  explore  the 
meaning  of  the  New  Testament  as  we  try  to  explore 

38 


PERSONALITY 

the  meaning  of  Dante  or  Kant,  seeking  the  intention 
before  drawing  our  inferences,  we  shall  read  some 
startling  things  concerning  personality.  For  thus  we 
should  measure,  not  ruling  them  out  as  figurative, 
those  terms  of  biology.  What  is  probably  the  earliest 
book  of  the  canon  is  addressed  "to  the  church  of  the 
Thessalonians  in  God  the  Father  and  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ".  No  more  mystic  language  can  be  found  in 
the  latest.  "Herein  is  my  Father  glorified,  that  ye 
bear  much  fruit.  So  shall  ye  be  my  disciples."  So  ? 
Not,  then,  primarily  by  subscribing  or  embracing  or 
defending  or  following,  but  by  living  as  branches  of 
a  vine.  Certainly  this  is  a  figure,  a  figure  of  organic 
life ;  but  what  does  it  mean  concerning  human  life  ? 
We  have  at  last  become  thoroughly  aware  of  a  de- 
fect in  old  measures  of  efficiency.  Brunetiere's  La 
banqueroute  de  la  science  rebuked  the  complacent 
looseness  of  our  talk  of  progress  a  generation  before 
the  practise  of  a  false  doctrine  of  efficiency  finally 
goaded  the  world  to  arms.  Meantime  the  profession 
of  the  engineer  has  been  gradually  enriched  and  ex- 
panded in  proportion  as  it  has  learned  to  measure  and 
to  promote  efficiency  humanly.  The  complicated  and 
menacing  problems  of  employment  are  at  least 
summed  up,  though  not  yet  solved,  in  the  phrase 
human  efficiency.  For  in  spite  of  all  our  machinery 

39 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

and  all  our  computations  in  "units"  we  have  learnecl 
that  not  only  administrative  efficiency,  but  labor  effi- 
ciency, is  the  efficiency  of  persons.  Appalled  by  our 
frightful  human  waste,  we  have  set  about  the  con- 
servation of  human  energy.  The  waste  of  misdirec- 
tion inspired  a  wide  extension  of  vocational  training. 
Real  progress  may  be  read  in  our  laws  restricting 
child  labor,  in  our  preventive  medicine  and  surgery, 
in  our  trade  schools,  in  all  the  scientific  philanthropy 
that  seeks  to  save  and  develop  persons. 

But  there  is  in  human  efficiency  something  beyond 
law  and  surgery,  beyond  technical  skill  and  eugenics. 
Its  imperfections  cannot  always  be  set  down  to  bad 
food  or  bad  eyes,  bad  schools  or  bad  parents;  and 
its  improvement  is  not  always  accomplished  by  a 
prescription  of  soup,  gymnasium,  and  evening  classes. 
The  sum  of  physical  capacity  and  technical  skill  may 
be  greater  or  less  than  the  total  human  efficiency ;  it 
does  not  measure  a  man's  effective  power  in  society. 
The  searchings  of  war  have  reminded  us  that  human 
efficiency,  operative,  executive,  administrative,  and 
above  all  initiative,  is  in  the  last  analysis  moral. 
Scientific  philanthropy  has  something  to  learn  from 
the  Salvation  Army.  Those  who  are  offended  at  the 
cant  use  of  the  word  salvation  may  get  a  fresh  and 
true  conception  by  pondering  what  is  meant  in  arid 

40 


PERSONALITY 

or  impoverished  districts  by  the  salvation  of  land.  It 
is  commonly  called  redemption;  and  it  consists  in 
revivifying  latent  or  spent  forces  by  feeding  them 
with  new  force;  it  is  life  awakening  and  liberating 
life.  While  we  were  studying  and  classifying 
juvenile  delinquency,  and  finding  laws,  reforma- 
tories, psychiatry,  and  settlements  inadequate, 
William  George  had  the  inspiration  to  cultivate  moral 
responsibility  by  trust.  Judge  Lindsey  revolution- 
ized criminal  procedure  by  making  children's  courts 
deal  personally  with  the  boy  himself.  The  "Big 
Brother"  movement,  sentimental  in  name,  amateur 
and  almost  impromptu  in  origin,  leaped  to  success 
because,  whatever  its  specific  prescription  of  food  or 
schooling  or  camp,  its  method  was  singly  and  con- 
stantly the  fortifying  of  moral  fiber  through  per- 
sonal contacts. 

Human  efficiency  is  expressed  by  Christianity  in 
personal  terms  as  being  personal  in  this  sense.  It  is 
measured  by  Christianity,  not  in  man-hours,  not  as 
labor  skilled  or  unskilled,  but  as  life ;  and  as  life  it  is 
to  be  guarded  and  promoted.  Herein  lies  the  sug- 
gestiveness  of  the  habitually  biological  language.  The 
human  product  is  not  square  yards,  barrels,  or  books ; 
it  is  fruit.  The  figure  connotes  more  than  soil  and 
seed;  it  means  growth.  Laborers  by  the  hour  or 

41 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

the  piece,  students  preoccupied  with  courses  and 
"points",  should  look  through  what  they  are  making, 
acquiring,  or  passing  to  what  they  are  growing. 
Fruit  as  a  term  of  growth  implies  that  human  pro- 
duction, as  in  the  figure  of  the  seed  or  of  the  vine, 
may  be  organic.  It  is  not  synonymous  with  the  ordi- 
nary sense  of  accomplishment.  Both  the  process  and 
the  progress  that  it  suggests  are  vital,  the  working 
out  from  within  of  life  that  shall  feed  and  reproduce. 
The  fruit  bears  the  seed. 

The  effort  of  organic  life  is  toward  reproduction. 
Plant  side  by  side  in  the  laboratory  two  equal  grains 
of  corn.  Give  one  its  due  supply  of  moisture  and 
of  plant  foods  while  you  starve  the  other.  When  the 
second  has  all  but  ceased  its  struggle  to  grow,  feed  it 
as  you  have  fed  the  thriving  first.  What  will  the 
starveling  do  ?  How  will  it  direct  its  organic  effort  ? 
Will  it  first  spread  forth  leaves  to  catch  the  sun? 
Will  it  first  insure  its  own  health  and  stature  ?  No, 
lest  it  should  die  too  soon,  it  will  first  focus  its  vitality 
on  producing  fruit.  It  will  bear,  however  stunted, 
ears  of  corn.  Human  life,  in  the  Christian  figure 
of  fruit,  is  to  receive,  nourish,  and  transmit  life. 
"Herein  is  my  Father  glorified,  that  ye  bear  much 
fruit",  means  that  God,  as  the  creative  source  of  life, 
brings  forth  the  human  harvest  from  men  for  men 

42 


PEKSOJSTALITY 

by  empowering  men.  "So  shall  je  be  my  disciples" ; 
not  merely  by  imitating  my  example,  nor  by  accept- 
ing my  words,  but  by  receiving  my  life  to  develop 
your  own.  "As  many  as  received  him,  to  them  gave 
he  power  to  become  the  sons  of  God".  In  that  fully 
personal  sense  "we  are  his  offspring". 

"As  many  as  received  him"  implies  also  that  per- 
sonality is  worth  developing  even  when  it  cannot  be 
discerned  as  exceptional,  when  it  seems  quite  ordinary 
human  nature.  The  idea  is  very  democratic;  it  is 
exactly  opposite  to  that  of  the  cultivation  of  the  super- 
man at  the  expense  of  his  fellows.  It  is  the  hope, 
not  of  egoists  and  tyrants,  but  of  the  world.  Assert- 
iveness  is  specifically  rebuked  by  the  divine  paradox, 
"He  that  saveth  his  life  shall  lose  it."  My  person- 
ality is  to  be  developed  not  that  I  may  have  more, 
but  that  I  may  give  more.  Indeed,  I  expand  by 
giving,  as  the  plant  yields.  None  the  less,  rather 
more  and  more,  that  which  is  developed  is  myself. 
Those  who  fear  lest  Christianity  should  violate  their 
personalities  discern  a  truth,  but  not  the  whole  truth. 
Christianity  does,  indeed,  thwart  many  desires,  in- 
hibit many  ambitions,  make  a  law  of  sacrifice;  but 
sacrifice  of  what?  Of  getting  and  having  to  being 
and  giving.  Which  counts  more  in  the  development 
of  humanity  ?  What  do  we  mean  and  desire  by  per- 

43 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

sonal  development  ?  Christianity  says  that  we  should 
desire  much  fruit. 

Those  who  have  imagined  the  Holy  Grail  out  of 
passionate  desire  to  receive  God  have  sought  not  only 
a  heavenly  vision,  but  the  heavenly  food.  They  have 
desired  the  power  to  do  through  the  power  to  be. 
"My  soul  is  athirst  for  God,  for  the  living  God",  is 
more  than  the  rapture  of  an  initiate ;  it  is  the  echo  of 
a  great  human  cry.  The  message  from  the  Are- 
opagus is  that  the  cry  is  answered,  that  to  "feel  after 
him  and  find  him"  has  its  complement  in  "he  is  not 
far",  that  God  so  loves  the  world  as  to  give  himself. 
"Offspring  of  God"  had  become  to  the  Greeks  stale 
in  speech  and  in  art.  The  apostle  seeks  to  revive  the 
empty  symbol  by  giving  to  it  the  personal  meaning  of 
"sons  of  God".  Personality  is  implicit  in  revelation ; 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  New  are  a  progressive 
revelation  of  the  divine  empowering  of  human  life; 
what  the  apostle  urges  as  the  final  revelation  is  com- 
pletely personal,  the  man  who  is  God. 

The  Christian  incarnation  is  not  God  as  embodied 
by  man;  it  is  God  embodying  man.  It  differs  es- 
sentially from  other  incarnations,  which  are  conceived 
as  a  temporary  sharing  of  human  experience,  by  being 
final  and  permanent.  God  has  not  only  visited  us; 
he  abides  with  us  and  forever  shares  our  human 

44 


PEKSOSTALITY 

nature.  It  is  sharply  distinct  from  divine  imma- 
nence, the  idea  of  God  diffused  through  the  universe. 
Emmanuel,  God  with  us,  has  always  meant  to  the 
Jew  more  than  this;  and  to  the  Christian  it  means 
still  more.  It  means  a  presence  completely  personal. 
"The  word  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us." 
Therefore  to  know  God  is  to  approach  nearer  and 
nearer  to  the  Son  of  God.  Christianity  constantly 
urges  this  as  the  only  way  because  the  word  is  God. 
To  know  God  fully  is  to  know  him  personally;  to 
know  him  personally  is  to  receive  his  personality ;  to 
receive  his  personality  is  to  receive  the  Son  of  God 
who  is  fully  Son  of  Man. 


45 


SYMBOL  AND  REALITY 

WHAT  does  Christianity  mean  by  "receiving  the 
Son  of  God"  ?  The  apostle  in  the  Areopagus 
proclaims  Christianity  to  the  Athenians  as  the  final 
answer  to  the  universal  human  question,  What  is  it 
to  know  God  ?  And  indeed  Christianity  is  distinctive 
only  in  so  far  as  it  offers  a  more  direct  energizing  of 
human  personality  by  the  divine  personality.  That 
God  is  approached  in  many  ways  and  speaks  through 
many  voices  the  Christian  missionary  not  only  ad- 
mits, but  emphasizes.  His  point,  none  the  less,  is 
that  the  Son  of  God  has  taken  our  humanity  in  order 
to  give  us,  not  one  more  approach  to  God,  but  the 
approach;  not  a  larger  conception,  but  the  contact, 
final  because  completely  personal.  Christianity  pro- 
poses that  we  shall  receive  power  to  become  sons  of 
God  by  receiving  the  Son  of  God.  It  presents  his 
incarnation  as  in  some  way  extended  to  "all  men 
everywhere".  The  Christian  way  can  be  the  way  of 
bringing  men  to  God  and  God  to  men  only  in  so  far 
as  it  extends  the  incarnation,  only  in  so  far  as  its  great 

46 


SYMBOL  AND  KEALITY 

commission,  "Do  this"  and  "Go  ye",  is  so  exercised 
as  to  give  men  the  Christ.  The  old  East,  long  dream- 
ing of  incarnations,  followed  a  new  star  and  crossed 
the  desert  to  worship  at  a  manger.  The  magi  "re- 
joiced with  exceeding  great  joy" — at  one  more  in- 
carnation, as  in  the  sacred  child  of  Thibet?  No, 
says  the  apostle  to  the  philosophers,  at  the  incarna- 
tion; not  at  another  vision  of  God  visiting  men,  but 
at  the  final  realization  of  manhood  assumed  and 
empowered  by  God. 

What,  then,  does  a  Christian  mean  by  receiving  the 
Christ  ?  More  than  one  thing,  doubtless,  as  through 
the  ages  men  have  meant  more  than  one  thing  by 
knowing  God;  but  what  essentially,  what  as  the 
common  Christian  conception?  What  in  the  Chris- 
tian experience  of  life  is  essentially  Christian  ?  Let 
a  Christian  answer  from  a  crisis  that  searches  his  life ; 
let  the  man  be  neither  a  theologian  nor  an  ecclesiastic, 
but  a  soldier;  and  let  him  answer  in  action  or  habit 
rather  than  in  formula.  An  American  soldier  in 
France  wrote  to  his  parents: 

"We  are  going  up  to  an  attack  in  a  short  time, 
and  I  am  going  to  leave  this  note  to  be  sent  to  you 
in  case,  by  God's  will,  this  is  to  be  my  final  work. 
I  have  made  my  Communion,  and  go  with  a  light 
heart,  and  a  determination  to  do  all  that  I  possibly 
47 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

can  to  help  in  this  fight  against  evil,  for  God  and 
humanity.  I  do  not  think  of  death  or  expect  it, 
but  I  am  not  afraid  of  it,  and  will  give  my  life 
gladly  if  it  is  asked."  * 

These  last  words  of  Edwin  Abbey  were  found  in 
his  soldier's  kit  after  his  death  in  that  attack  on 
April  10,  1917.  Thousands  of  young  soldiers  in  this 
war  have  felt,  and  hundreds  have  expressed,  the  same 
singleness  of  devotion.  They  have  said,  "I  will  give 
my  life  gladly",  knowing,  as  they  had  never  known  be- 
fore, that  this  gift  is  worth  even  more  than  it  costs 
because  it  is  the  gift.  "Greater  love  hath  no  man 
than  this"  not  only  because  it  costs  most,  but  because 
it  counts  most.  To  give  oneself  utterly  is  to  give 
oneself  effectively.  "He  that  loseth  his  life  for  my 
sake  shall  save  it." 

Why  should  he  add  "I  have  made  my  Com- 
munion" '{  Is  it  filial  remembrance  of  his  parents' 
pious  habits,  inserted  to  comfort  them  with  his  ob- 
servance of  their  ways  ?  His  letters  show  him  too 
sincere  for  that ;  and  they  mention  religion  elsewhere 
as  naturally  as  they  mention  the  landscape,  or  the 
courtesy  of  his  French  peasant  hostess.  They  are  all 
of  a  piece.  Why  should  such  a  man  before  his  "final 
work"  make  a  point  of  a  particular  religious  symbol  ? 
*  Atlantic  Monthly,  volume  121,  page  469  (April  1918). 
48 


SYMBOL  AND  KEALITY 

Because  it  is  more  than  a  symbol;  because  he  knew 
"Communion"  as  a  reality;  because  he  was  certain 
that  he  should  give  his  life  for  men  more  effectively 
by  receiving  the  Savior  of  mankind.  To  demonstrate 
this  in  his  case  and  in  others  would  be  easy,  but  beside 
the  point.  The  inquiry  is  larger;  it  opens  Chris- 
tianity as  a  history.  Why  is  the  Eucharist,  to  use 
the  term  common  to  East  and  West,  the  central  rite 
of  the  historic  Church  ?  The  answer  is  largest  where 
it  is  simplest  and  most  direct.  "Then  received  they 
their  Savior"  is  the  traditional  way  of  expressing  the 
Communion  as  the  personal  contact  of  man  with 
God.  Again  and  again,  through  centuries,  men 
facing  death  with  life,  giving  their  lives  with  full 
Christian  consciousness,  have  desired  to  give  in  union 
with  the  life  once  and  forever  given.  Again  and 
again,  through  centuries  divided  by  war,  but  united 
by  a  corporate  Christian  feeling,  these  are  the 
common  words,  at  Tours  or  at  Vienna,  in  history  or 
in  poetry,  and  on  both  sides  at  Agincourt — "then 
received  they  their  Savior".  Edwin  Abbey  is  simply 
the  Christian  soldier  once  more.  When  such  men 
have  gathered  up  their  lives  and  offered  them  for  that 
new  earth  in  which  dwelleth  righteousness,  they  desire 
at  the  summoning  hour  what  they  desired  at  every 
summoning  hour  of  their  lives — more  than  clear  as- 

49 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

piration  of  their  own,  more  than  the  heartening  words 
of  their  fellow  men,  however  strong  or  holy,  more 
than  the  divine  words  of  poetry  or  revelation,  more 
than  any  words  or  thoughts  whatever.  They  want 
God. 

Does  not  society  want  the  same  thing  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church?  Socially  Christianity  is  the  ministry 
of  the  Christ  by  men  to  men.  The  distinctive  func- 
tion of  the  Church  in  the  community  has  been  his- 
torically the  communication  of  the  life  of  the  in- 
carnate Son  of  God.  Whatever  else  the  Church  has 
been,  whatever  its  variations  of  place  and  time,  its 
popularity  or  persecution,  its  progress,  perversion,  or 
confusion,  this  is  its  characteristic  function  and  the 
constant  in  its  corporate  consciousness.  The  two 
great  words  with  which  it  was  sent  forth,  a  handful 
of  obscure  men  from  a  corner  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
to  save  the  world  are  "Do  this"  and  "Go  ye,  preach, 
baptize".  Its  history  may  be  comprehended  as  the 
development  of  this  ministry.  Have  not  its  wander- 
ings been  deviations  from  this ;  its  disintegrations  for 
lack  of  this  integration  ?  The  strong  and  wise  have 
bowed  not  to  its  human  preaching,  but  to  its  divine 
presence;  the  weak  and  ignorant  have  turned  away 
when  they  found  its  altars  empty.  The  history  of 
Christianity  is  the  history  of  its  sacraments. 

50 


SYMBOL  AKD  REALITY 

For  men  and  women  have  gone  to  church  to  meet 
God.  ISTo  other  motive  has  been  generally  and  per- 
manently sufficient.  They  need  not  go  to  think  about 
God  or  to  realize  God ;  that  they  may  achieve  in  the 
forest  or  by  the  sea.  They  may  go  to  meet  one  an- 
other, to  feel  spiritual  companionship,  to  be  inspired 
by  preaching,  to  pray  in  a  religious  atmosphere;  but 
these  motives  are  not  essential  and  have  not  been 
generally  compelling.  The  Church  in  any  form  is, 
indeed,  social;  that  is  implied  in  the  word  itself. 
Any  conception  of  a  church  implies  a  social  group. 
But  the  Christian  Church  as  its  character  appears  in 
history  is  social  in  a  larger  and  different  sense.  It 
is  social  not  because  men  propose  to  help  one  another, 
but  because  God  proposes  to  redeem  society.  Its 
common  life  is  not  gathered  from  within  and  from 
around ;  it  comes  from  above. 

So,  using  here  also  its  typically  biological  language, 
the  Christian  Church  has  called  itself  an  organism, 
the  body  of  Christ.  The  New  Testament  oftener 
assumes  or  implies  the  Church  than  describes  or  ex- 
plains it.  It  was  the  fact  of  Christianity  most 
familiar  to  the  men  and  women  to  whom  the  earliest 
Christian  writings  were  primarily  addressed,  and  the 
instrument  by  which  Christianity  was  made  known 
to  the  world.  All  the  more  strikingly,  therefore,  the 

51 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

direct  references  of  the  'New  Testament  to  the  Church, 
as  well  as  the  implications  and  allusions,  agree  in 
presenting  it  as  a  social  organism  ordained  by  God  to 
regenerate  human  society  organically  by  ministering 
the  divine  life.  The  Church  called  men  to  turn  to 
God  present  and  living.  It  baptized  them  not  merely 
to  mark  their  renunciation  of  errors  and  their  appre- 
hension of  truth,  but  to  wash  away  their  sins  and 
make  them  children  of  God.  It  made  its  central  rite, 
"the  breaking  of  bread  and  the  prayers",  not  merely  a 
reminder  of  God's  love,  a  communion  with  one  an- 
other, and  an  imaginative  realization  of  the  Christ's 
presence,  but  the  answer  of  praise  and  prayer  to  his 
actual  presence  and  the  reception  of  him  in  the  bread 
and  wine  imparting  himself. 

This  is  why  the  apostle  in  the  Areopagus  focuses 
righteousness,  or  personal  efficiency,  in  the  "man 
whom  God  ordained  and  raised  from  among  the 
dead".  For  the  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God,  his 
embodying  of  human  nature,  becomes  operative  not  by 
being  apprehended  as  an  idea,  but  by  being  appro- 
priated as  life;  and  the  ministry  of  the  Christian 
Church  is  the  ministry  of  this  life.  Therefore  the 
Christian  apostles  did  more  than  proclaim  the  in- 
carnation and  the  resurrection;  they  ministered  to 
men  the  incarnate  living  Lord.  The  earliest  recorded 

52 


SYMBOL  AND  KEALITY 

facts  of  Christianity  after  Pentecost  are  Baptism  and 
the  Eucharist.  Both  are  alike  inexplicable  on  any 
theory  of  propaganda  for  the  extension  of  either  ideas 
or  example.  They  propose  a  new  personal  birth  and 
a  new  personal  life,  both  to  be  imparted,  not  by 
preaching  and  acceptance,  but  by  direct  personal  con- 
tact. In  the  earliest  of  the  epistles  formulating 
specific  doctrine  and  practise  the  apostle  of  the  Are- 
opagus declares  to  the  Corinthians :  *  "My  word  and 
preaching  were  not  in  persuasive  words  of  wisdom, 
but  in  showing  forth  of  spirit  and  power,  that  your 
faith  may  be  not  in  men's  wisdom,  but  in  God's 
power".  More  specifically  he  devotes  a  whole  section 
of  this  epistle  to  setting  forth  with  great  care  the 
proper  observance  of  the  Eucharist,  quoting  the  very 
words  of  its  institution.  Those  words  were  afterward 
incorporated  in  the  gospels  as  history ;  but  meantime 
they  had  been  incorporated  in  the  central  rite  of 
Christianity  as  worship  and  communion.  The 
apostle's  care  is  evidently  not  to  correct  a  record,  but 
to  insure  the  rite.  Why  ?  "That  your  faith  may  be 
not  in  men's  wisdom,  but  in  God's  power." 

That  the  words  instituting  the  Eucharist  have  been, 
and  are,  explained  otherwise  is  also  part  of  the  his- 
tory of  Christianity.  "How  can  this  man  give  us  his 

*1  Cor.  2:4. 

S3 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

flesh  to  eat  ?"  has  been  asked  again  and  again.  But 
it  has  never  expressed  the  real  question  of  the  soul 
praying  that  God  may  not  remain  unknown.  That 
question  is  less  how  he  gives  himself  than  whether  he 
gives  himself,  less  of  the  manner  than  of  the  fact. 
"How  are  the  dead  raised?"  This  apostle  repeats 
that  question  too  as  typical;  but  his  answer,  so  elo- 
quent in  the  burial  service,  strikes  through  it  to  a 
larger  inquiry.  Perhaps  he  remembered  these  Athe- 
nians, who  "mocked  when  they  heard  of  the  resurrec- 
tion". Perhaps  he  suggests  that  the  how  is  beside 
the  point  or  beyond  explanation.  But  certainly  the 
answer  is  of  a  deeper  question  than  that  of  the  manner 
of  immortality ;  it  asserts  the  expansion  of  life  from 
life.  "Thou  fool,  that  which  thou  sowest  is  not 
quickened  except  it  die ;  and  that  which  thou  sowest, 
thou  sowest  not  that  body  that  shall  be,  but  bare  grain, 
it  may  chance  of  wheat  or  of  some  other  grain;  but 
God  giveth  it  a  body  as  it  hath  pleased  him,  and  to 
every  seed  his  own  body."  *  The  dead  are  raised 
organically,  as  seed  is  raised  when  the  germ  bursts 
its  envelope.  It  is  still  wheat  or  barley;  remaining 
itself,  it  becomes  more  wheat,  more  barley,  more  it- 
self. So  those  who  said  at  the  beginning,  and  who 
have  said  ever  since,  "How  can  this  man  give  us  his 

*1  Cor.  15:36. 

54 


SYMBOL  AND  EEALITY 

flesh  to  eat?"  are  the  scoffers.  The  seekers  after 
God  ask  a  deeper  question,  the  question  of  the  dis- 
ciples standing  by  the  Christ  before  the  multitude: 
"There  are  loaves  here;  but  what  are  they  among 
so  many?"  Is  the  incarnate  life  really  extended? 
Will  the  Christ  really  feed  mankind,  not  with  their 
own  hopes,  but  with  himself?  Does  he  indeed 
through  the  bread  that  we  bring  give  himself  to  the 
hungering  and  thirsting  multitude  ?  What  men  ask 
of  Christianity  is  not  definition  of  the  manner  in 
which  the  Christ  gives  himself  sacramentally,  but 
certitude  of  the  fact.  What  difficulty  of  explaining 
the  manner  in  terms  of  chemistry  and  physics  com- 
pares with  the  difficulty  of  explaining  the  historical 
fact  that  the  Church  spread  over  the  world  with  water 
and  bread  and  wine?  But  with  a  ministry  of  the 
Christ  living  and  present  must  it  not  indeed  conquer 
the  world,  going  with  equal  certitude  to  the  intellec- 
tual heights  of  Athens  and  the  moral  depths  of 
Corinth  ? 

The  worship  of  God  living  and  present  expressed 
itself  artistically  in  ceremonial,  then  in  architecture, 
sculpture,  painting.  In  literature  it  animated  the 
highest  of  medieval  romances,  the  story  of  the  Holy 
Grail.  That  story  kept  its  hold  on  imagination, 
spread  over  Europe,  and  has  been  told  in  various 

55 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

forms  down  to  our  own  day,  because  it  answers  those 
hearts  for  whom  the  real  presence  is  a  yearning  as  well 
as  those  for  whom  it  is  a  faith.  Historically  the 
story  is  an  allegory  of  the  Eucharist,  springing  from 
the  exaltation  of  the  sacrament  of  the  altar.  For 
this  is  the  animating  source  of  the  holy  grail.  That 
the  original  grail  of  folklore  was  not  holy,  but  magic, 
probably  not  religious  and  almost  certainly  not  Chris- 
tian, makes  the  allegory  only  the  more  suggestive. 
Not  what  the  story  took,  but  what  it  made,  is  the 
evidence  of  its  animating  spirit,  as  many  a  saints' 
legend,  to  borrow  a  witty  word,  is  "a  baptized  folk- 
tale". The  Grail  became  the  literary  symbol  of  a 
great  historical  devotion.  Where  that  devotion  has 
died,  or  has  never  been  born,  the  story  remains  remote 
or  extravagant,  or  is  reshaped  into  forms  to  which  no 
skill  in  music,  verse,  or  color  can  give  life.  It  is  vital 
only  when  the  symbol  is  of  reality.  Else  it  has  only 
that  empty  beauty  which  was  all  that  the  Athenians 
had  kept  from  the  elder  conception  of  the  maiden 
goddess  "graven  in  stone"  upon  the  Acropolis. 

Such  empty  beauty,  the  symbol  of  a  dead  faith,  is 
all  that  is  left  in  the  Christian  sacraments  themselves 
for  modern  Athenians.  For  them  the  sacraments 
are  nothing  more  than  expressions  of  our  resolutions 
and  aspirations.  For  them  the  incarnation  is  only 

56 


SYMBOL  AND  BEAUTY 

less  antiquated  than  the  Athena  Parthenos.  It  means 
merely  a  vision  of  God's  having  given  himself,  not 
the  fact  of  his  giving  himself  now.  Is  not  the 
presence  of  God  subjective  ?  Is  it  not  my  realization 
in  philosophy,  in  sculpture,  in  poetry,  in  worship? 
Yes,  says  the  apostle ;  for  every  human  expression  of 
God  is  divine  to  the  extent  that  it  expresses  the  uni- 
versal human  quest  guided  by  God.  It  is  an  answer 
of  the  soul  to  God,  an  effort  to  "grope  after  him  and 
find  him'7.  But,  he  goes  on,  we  must  not  stop  there, 
lest  we  worship  our  own  images.  Religion  remains 
partial  and  tentative  until  it  embraces  not  only  the 
soul's  answer  to  God,  but  also  God's  answer  to  the 
soul.  What  Edwin  Abbey  sought  with  his  whole 
manhood  gathered  up  into  his  last  hour  was  not  reali- 
zation, but  reality,  not  a  sense  of  God,  but  God.  The 
presence  of  God,  says  the  apostle,  is  not  our  achieve- 
ment; it  is  God's  gift  of  himself;  else  God  ceases  to 
be  God.  We  do  not  bring  him  down  to  us;  he  lifts 
us  to  him.  It  is  not  our  realization  of  God,  however 
clear  the  idea,  however  beautiful  the  imaginative  con- 
ception ;  it  is  God  come  to  us.  That  God  "dwelleth 
not  in  temples  made  with  hands"  means  that  he  is 
greater  than  any  human  definition,  conception,  or 
rite;  it  does  not  mean  that  he  remains  diffused  and 
remote.  The  apostle  cries  aloud  in  Areopagus  that 

57 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

he  is  not  remote,  that  he  has  come,  comes,  and  will 
come.  His  incarnation,  the  fulfilment  of  his  love  for 
men,  the  complete  and  perpetual  giving  to  them  of 
himself,  is  made  present  to  "all  men  everywhere". 

God  is  everywhere  immanent,  guiding  the  prehis- 
toric flow  of  glaciers,  the  reflux  of  sap,  the  dim  quests 
of  savage  worship  groping  after  him.  But  that  he 
is  everywhere  does  not  imply  that  he  is  nowhere  in 
particular ;  else  we  who  live  in  time  and  place  could 
indeed  never  find  Him.  His  response  to  us  is  in  terms 
of  our  human  life.  That  is  the  significance  of  those 
words,  so  strange  in  Athens :  "defining  the  established 
seasons"  of  nations,  "proclaims"  repentance,  "has 
set"  a  day,  "the  manhood  in  whom  He  defined" 
righteousness.  The  illimitable  personality  enters  the 
limits  of  human  personality,  has  made  himself  man 
for  us,  enters  our  bounds  of  time  and  place,  is  here 
and  now  according  to  his  word.  Answering  all  the 
honest  ways  of  our  seeking,  he  calls  to  his  own  ways 
of  giving.  Because  he  loves  "he  hath  appointed". 

Nomads  of  the  old  East  sought  after  God  in  their 
ways  and  found  him.  God  did  not  withdraw  himself 
from  their  rudest  seeking.  But  the  love  of  God  is 
more  than  responsive.  He  drew  mankind  to  him 
through  an  appointed  race,  in  appointed  ways,  until 
the  kingdom  of  Israel  should  be  reborn  as  the  kingdom 

58 


SYMBOL  AND  KEALITY 

cf  God.  "Our  fathers,"  says  this  apostle,  "all  ate  the 
same  spiritual  food  and  all  drank  the  same  spiritual 
drink;  for  they  drank  of  that  spiritual  rock  that 
accompanied  them,  and  that  rock  was  the  Christ."  * 
Over  against  the  unholy  fires  of  perverted  religion 
shone  the  Shekinah  at  the  Jewish  mercy-seat.  The 
one  worship  had  lost  God  in  its  own  realizations  of 
"gold  and  silver  and  stone  graven  by  art  and  man's 
device" ;  the  other  had  his  real  presence.  In  so  far 
as  they  ministered  in  and  through  that  presence, 
"salvation  is  of  the  Jews".  The  wider  world  was  to 
be  developed  and  empowered  by  their  ministry  to 
mankind  of  God  with  them.  For  God's  love  of  man- 
kind has  always  said  not  only  "Do  this",  but  "Go  ye", 
has  always  appointed  not  only  ways,  but  ministers. 
Through  men  he  has  given  himself  to  men.  The 
Church  of  God  is  fallible  in  every  human  member; 
but  it  is  holy  in  his  indwelling.  "We  have  this 
treasure  in  earthen  vessels" ;  but  the  treasure  is  not 
earthen.  ISTo  failure  of  Levite  or  priest  could  impair 
the  gift  in  his  hands.  Through  the  ways  and  the 
men  of  God's  appointing  men  may  enter  into  his 
presence  and  receive  him.  His  presence  is  real  with 
all  the  reality  of  human  life  and  with  all  the  deeper 
reality  of  his  own.  "For  the  reality  that  we  see  is 

*1  Cor.  10:3. 

59 


GOD  UNKNOWN 

limited  by  time;   it  is  the  unseen  reality  that  is 
eternal."  * 

Nothing  could  be  more  different  from  that  walk- 
ing with  the  gods  which  we  discern  in  Greek  religion. 
"To  the  Greek,  in  so  far  as  he  was  a  Greek,  religion 
was  an  aspiration  to  grow  like  the  gods  by  invoking 
their  companionship,  rehearsing  their  story,  feeling 
vicariously  the  glow  of  their  splendid  prerogatives, 
and  placing  them,  in  the  form  of  beautiful  and  very 
human  statues,  constantly  before  his  eyes."  f  Idols 
are  embodiments  of  powers,  greater  than  ourselves, 
which  we  call  divine.  They  may  be  as  crude  as  a 
painted  stick  or  as  glorious  as  the  Athenian  art  beheld 
by  the  apostle ;  but  so  far  the  difference  of  idol  from 
idol  is  merely  in  civilization,  and  should  not  obscure 
the  fact  that  idols  are  still  made  and  that  they  are 
essentially  alike.  The  philosophic  objection  to  the 
making  of  them  is  that  it  tends  to  blur  clear  thinking. 
The  ethical  objection  is  that  they  have  uniformly 
become  centers  of  unbalanced,  and  often  of  perverted, 
living.  The  religious  objection  finds  the  root  of  both 
tendencies  in  the  fact  that  they  divide  and  dissipate 
what  should  be  unified.  The  horror  of  the  Jew  at 
idols  was  more  than  a  philosophic  objection  to  poly- 

*  2  Cor.  4:  18. 

f  George  Santayana,  Lucretius. 

60 


SYMBOL  A:NTD  REALITY 

theism;  it  sprang  from  his  ancestral  recollections  of 
the  worship  of  Astarte,  from  his  experience  that 
human  life  could  be  integrated  only  by  worshiping 
one  God,  and  from  his  conviction  that  the  one  true 
God  has  revealed  and  communicated  himself. 

So  the  Christian  apostle,  looking  at  the  sculpture 
and  remembering  the  literature  of  Athens,  discerned 
the  whole  peril  of  idols  in  the  light  of  the  incarnation. 
Men  must  not  embody  God;  for  God  has  embodied 
man.  They  must  not  rest  in  symbols  of  the  divine 
nature ;  for  God  has  taken  our  human  nature.  They 
must  not  feed  on  fancies;  they  must  feed  on  the 
Christ.  Can  Christianity  give  them  less  than  the 
Christ  without  peril  of  erecting  one  more  altar  To 
GOD  UNKNOWN  ?  If  what  I  find  is  after  all  only 
myself,  I  must  eat  my  own  heart. 


61 


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